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Amazon Music Changes

DimitryZ

pfm Member
I was excited to read that Amazon is now including HD (CD lossless) and HIRES (lissless) for most of its subscribers.

I really liked the quality of the previous Amazon HD service to which I subscribe to, along with Tidal and Qobuz. I thought that on recent comparative listening of the exceptional recording of Melody Gardot's "Sunset in the Blue (SE)" Amazon HD did better than Qobuz and almost as good as the sensational MQA version.

Today, after playing Rickie Lee Jones' niche MQA-CD release, I thought I would do my duty on the MQA thread and compare it to hires LPCM version on Amazon HD,, which I expected to be very good.

I was surprised that RLJ ubiquitous release wasn't marked with "HD" or ""ULTRA-HD" logo. When I played it (iPad app), it showed 192KHz. I looked around and all the "HD"and "ULTRA-HD" logos disappeared and everything was ostensibly uosampled to 192KHz. I am not against upsampling, but it would be still nice to know what the original recording rate was. My phone app shows the same thing.

Is this the experience of other Amazon HD subscribers? It's not the iPad interface as Qobuz plays the same rates as the music displays. I tried two of my four DACs with the same result....

Curious to hear your experience.

Edit TL: adding affiliated Amazon HD link.
 
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I've read news where they want to remastered certain titles to 24/192 including those that were originally recorded at 16/44.1.

Is this happening now?
 
I've read news where they want to remastered certain titles to 24/192 including those that were originally recorded at 16/44.1.

Is this happening now?
It seems unlikely, as everything I played (5 titles) showed 192 on the DAC but no ULTRA-HD on the album description.

I like the service, since at least before it sounded excellent (and still may, I wasn't listening carefully), because all physical media I bought was immediately available for streaming (which IS cool) but as audiophiles we demand to have our hires albums thusly labeled (true or not :))!
 
Do you know which 3rd party companies support/will support Amazon HD. When I looked into it only BluOS seemed to have a decent implementation. I use Roon mainly but also flip around to LightningDS, Mosaic, Volumio, SONOS.
 
Do you know which 3rd party companies support/will support Amazon HD. When I looked into it only BluOS seemed to have a decent implementation. I use Roon mainly but also flip around to LightningDS, Mosaic, Volumio, SONOS.
I'm trialling Amazon HD for 3 months at the moment through a Node 2i.
To be honest the implementation isn't great - for example any changes to your library have to be done through the Amazon app rather than Bluos (adding/deleting artists for example).
That said at half the cost of Tidal I think I could live with that.:)
 
I'm trialling Amazon HD for 3 months at the moment through a Node 2i.
To be honest the implementation isn't great - for example any changes to your library have to be done through the Amazon app rather than Bluos (adding/deleting artists for example).
That said at half the cost of Tidal I think I could live with that.:)
Yeah that’s what I found, I’d use it as well as Qobuz. Until it integrates with a decent App I can use or more unlikely drops into Roon not an option, I’ll leave it a while to settle down before doing a trial to see how the SQ stacks up.
 
The other thing I noticed (which could just be me being a bit thick) is that even within the Amazon app there doesn't appear to be any way you can add an artist to your music.
It appears you have to add an album by that artist which then effectively adds the artist - unlike Tidal/Qobuz where adding the artist automatically adds all their material it seems you have to manually add albums/ep's/singles to build up a discography which is a bit of a pain.
 
On Stuarts recommendation I have started a 3 month trial with Amazon HD to compare to my Tidal Hifi and Quobuz Studio subscriptions.

So far I kind of like it but no genre search for Jazz?

Could be a deal breaker.
 
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On Stuarts recommendation I have started a 3 month trial with Amazon HD to compare to my Tidal Hifi and Quobuz Studio subscriptions.

So far I kind of like it but no genre search for Jazz?

Could be a deal breaker.
That they have, from the bottom options, at least in IOS, with the Search button.

Not as extensive as Qobuz, which itself isn't as granular as Tidal.
 
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I've also recently started a 3 month trial.......apparently after the trial it's £7.99 for Prime members which is less than I'm paying for Spotify. The SQ is better but the library doesn't seem to be as extensive as Spotify. My main complaint is that there's no gapless playback.
 
Can those that are using Amazon Music app now see if "HD" and "Ultra HD" labels are still there or have disappeared, like they have for me.
 
I looked around and all the "HD"and "ULTRA-HD" logos disappeared and everything was ostensibly uosampled to 192KHz. I am not against upsampling, but it would be still nice to know what the original recording rate was. My phone app shows the same thing.

I'm not keen on the upsampling of that's what is going on. To me that seems a con to allow them to put a HD or UltraHD logo against it. It would be nice to have clear labelling of the source origins along with the mastering etc. Why is there a reluctance to be clear on this basic info?
 
That's odd - it's certainly gapless through the Bluos app and I've just tried the Amazon desktop app on my pc and that's gapless as well.:confused:
Searching Google seemed to imply that gapless wasn't available......
It certainly wasn't working for me using an iPad and Moode Airplay.....BUT I've just installed the Amazon Windows app and gapless is working!
 


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